I’ve long been on a quest to find the perfect travel alarm clock. This Eagle Creek one is still not it, but it comes closer than most.
It seems like designing the perfect travel clock wouldn’t be all that hard: lightweight, small, inexpensive, quiet, dependable, stingy with batteries, and lighted.
It’s the combination of those last two that always seem to throw the designers and this Eagle Creek Multi-function clock fits the pattern. It hits most of the right notes, but doesn’t have a light, which left me, as the Jayhawks say, stumbling through the dark.
“But hey,” they would probably answer, “what were you expecting for $16.50?” (You’ll rarely find it discounted from that, so go with the best shipping option for the online retailers listed at the end of this review.) For that measly price you get an alarm clock with snooze, one-button displays of 16 time zones around the world, the date, calculator/currency exchange and—my favorite extra—a thermometer. (When your bedmate says she’s freezing, you can look up and see if she’s delusional.)
Getting the clock set up is not exactly Apple-intuitive: you’ll definitely need the instruction manual. And the manual is pretty useless when it comes to figuring out the currency conversion function. The battery is included though, so you can get going out of the box and after the initial set-up you can leave it alone until you change time zones. Then when you reset that time zone later, all the others adjust as well.
In normal display state, you see the date, time, and temperature, though oddly the time is displayed as 2-45 instead of 2:45, which still looks odd to me after weeks of use. As mentioned before though, there’s no light—not even one you can press in the middle of the night to see what time it is. So if you want to check the time, you need to take it with you to the bathroom or something.
But the lack of a light is likely because of using a watch battery to keep the weight and size down. The whole thing closes up, clam shell style, for traveling and is less than five inches long. It only weighs a few ounces and it comes with a lifetime warranty.
I’m still looking for that perfect travel alarm clock with all of the above plus a light and easy-to-deduce controls, but until I find it this will work. I just need to keep my Timex Indiglo watch next to it at night…
When I say this travel alarm clock is widely available, don’t take my word for it. Follow these links to shop for it at eBags, Buy.com, REI, or Amazon.
#1 by Kevin - July 21st, 2010 at 18:31
Tim,
Interesting. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I can’t understand the need for a travel alarm clock when virtually every cell phone has an alarm feature.
My BlackBerry has an alarm with a snooze button, plus it doubles as a low level “flashlight” when needed. In addition, I’ve downloaded a currency converter app. Plus, it’s a GPS device. And oh yeah, it’s a phone, too. Plus it’s already with me, and I don’t need to carry another gadget.
Need I go on? Don’t mean to be negative, I just don’t get it. Sorry!
Kevin
#2 by Tim - July 22nd, 2010 at 23:10
Kevin,
Well, several reasons. Most people still don’t carry a smart phone, especially when traveling out of the country and facing rapacious international data rates. The alarm on any regular cell phone or watch is about half the volume of every real alarm clock I’ve tested. My light-sleeping wife, my child, and I have all slept through the far-from-loud alarms put out by those devices. When you need to catch a 6 am flight, you don’t want to take any chances. Last, you can routinely go six months or a year without charging/changing batteries on an alarm clock. An iPhone can go…a day if you’re lucky? With a power-sucking smart phone, hope you’re not in a resort that uses a generator for a few hours each night, or in a city in India where the power goes off as much as it’s on!
#3 by Renaldo - July 23rd, 2010 at 10:39
I used to try to use my Blackberry as an alarm clock, but after missing two meetings because I slept through it, that was the end of that. My watch is even worse—the alarm on there probably wouldn’t wake a mouse.
#4 by Linda - July 23rd, 2010 at 10:44
I function fine using my blackberry as an alarm clock, but I have to turn the volume all the way up before I go to bed. Then if I forget to turn it back down, it’s the loudest phone on earth when I get a call later! The charging issue isn’t as big a deal with RIM devices as it is with the iPhone or Android phones. Plus with RIM you can get an international data plan that’s not too pricey through Verizon or T-mobile and use it in other countries for one monthly fee. The Apple/ATT monopoly is a different story.
#5 by Kevin - July 25th, 2010 at 19:52
@Tim,
Good points. Fortunately, my travels don’t entail travel to developing nations. As for the volume issue, I confess that I’m a light sleeper and never have a problem with the BB waking me up.